About me...
As Janet Paine I grew up in a Kentish seaside town, Herne Bay, with my six sisters and brother playing 'imagine' games and writing prize winning compositions in school. The family has expanded somewhat since those days ~ this was taken recently at my Dad's eightieth birthday and represents four generations. I'm the one on the extreme right with my eyes closed!
After the failure of my teenage marriage, I married my graphic designer boss, Mike, and we continued to work together in our advertising agency in Canterbury, adopting cats and dogs and walking wherever and whenever we could. In the late nineteen-eighties, at the toss of a coin, we sold our business and moved to the Lake District where my husband became a professional artist and I managed an idyllically located hotel on the shores of Ullswater.
I still love walking, which along with my other loves: cats, border collies, cooking, history and gardening, feature quite frequently in my novels. And here I am with Mike at the top of Kidsty Pike, one of the landmarks in the Coast to Coast walk.
It is hard to believe, but a few weeks after the above picture was taken, by a young man doing the Coast to Coast walk, my husband was told he had cancer. He survived to be present at the launch of Coast to Coast and I do believe he was more excited and proud than I was! Throughout the two years of his illness we were wonderfully supported by a Macmillan Nurse and in the final stages by our local Hospice at Home ~ two charities worthy of everybody's support.
There is a saying to the effect that life is a journey and that the journey is more important than the destination – I really identify with that. The idea for my novel, COAST TO COAST, came to me on a walk. I had walked to the top of a mountain and although I could see for miles, my starting point had become obscured by the ups and downs of the ground I'd covered; my finishing point was concealed by the challenges yet to be faced. I knew where I was heading but the route I had planned had already undergone changes to overcome obstacles. Life is like that. So, I plotted my story about a woman in her middle years, with all the joys and regrets of half her life lived and a future ahead, but for whom recent events have caused doubts about her chosen route. To a greater or lesser degree, I think most women have been there.